Asianart.com | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries

I bought a modern Japanese print in Antique Auction House. The print name was just “Oriental print”. Please, help me to find the artist name. I am sending full picture of print and two red seals on left and right side, japanese cursive
Thanks for your time.
Best regards.

Thank you very much for the quick reply.
Your help greatly appreciated. Now, I know how to describe this print to my family and friends.

Best regards.

I am surprised this print was called a "modern Japanese print" with Japanese cursive.

According to the Chinese characters listed on the bottom of the print, it says,

"Zhou Xing Hua, 1985, self-draw, self-carve and self-print."

Zhou is the family name of the painter, it can also be spelled as Chou, Chow, etc. depends on what part of China the painter originally came from.

Cannot read the seal at the left (the first one posted here) but the second one (one on the right side of the print) reads:

"An original print by the Zhou's"

The scenery of the print looks very familiar to me and make me wonder if it may be a scenery captured at Suzhou, China - the little Venice of China. (see one of the picture of Suzhou posted here for comparison) and you can go to this link for more pictures:

http://travel.webshots.com/album/432019412UFQsiS

Hope this will help.

Bill

Wow, I believe I am quite good, I have to admit, that is in figuring out and confirm the origin and theme of this print. Now I believe I have confirmed this print is indeed a scenery of Suzhou because I looked at the first "seal mark" posted here and finally figured out what it was:

蘇州水巷

Su Zhou Shui Xiang

From right, top to bottom, the two Chinese seal scripts are Su Zhou (or Suzhou the city).

From left, top to bottom, they are Shui (water, river) Xiang (lane, alley), therefore it is the title of the print and can be loosely translated as:

"Suzhou's river alley" or "Suzhou's canals".

The seal is not very well executed and that is why it took me a little bit longer to figure them out.

Enjoy.

Bill

Bill,
Thanks a lot for your research and help. I think, I am hook on asian prints, planning to buy more.
Best regards.

Bill,

It seems you are spot-on about Zhou Xing Hua (周興華) and Suzhou - see the link to a Japanese (!) website below.

What puzzles me is how you could tell immediately that Mark's print is Chinese and not Japanese. I know no Chinese at all and very little Japanese, and I find it very difficult to tell the difference, especially when the style of the print is highly influenced by Western art, as in this case. Japanese signatures and print titles are usually written only with Chinese characters ('kanji' in Japanese).

Mark posted a question about this print on my "Ukiyo-e Q & A" board a couple of weeks ago. He had bought it together with a number of Hiroshige reprints, and though I did consider the possibility that it was Chinese, I saw no specific reason to believe so. Anyway, it was modern and certainly not an ukiyo-e print, so I suggested that he'd post it in this forum instead - which turned out to be a very good idea, thanks to you.

I have noticed that even contributors to this forum sometimes don't realise that the Japanese and the Chinese peoples share a written language of many thousands of characters. If you see a book or a newspaper, you can tell the difference very easily, because everyday Japanese is written with a mixture of Chinese characters and 'kana' characters that are specifically Japanese. But the inscriptions on Japanese artefacts, like signatures, seals or print titles, very seldom contain any kana characters - making it very hard sometimes to distinguish between Chinese and Japanese if you're not a fluent reader of either of these languages. So naturally I would like to know if you have any tips, Bill. For instance, is there a generic difference between Chinese and Japanese handwriting?

Best regards,
Hans Olof


URL Title :周興華

Hi, Hans Olof:

Some times it is more luck than anything. In this case, when I read those Chinese characters on the bottom of the print, I knew immediately it was drawn by a Chinese artist because Zhou is a Chinese last name and I have never heard of any Japanese with a last name of Zhou. Also, I do not know if you notice or not, almost most of the Japanese names are composed of four characters and most of the Chinese names are composed of three characters (one for last name, two for first name). Of course there are exceptions to this. For chinese compound family name such as Auyeung, Sze-to or Sze-ma, two Chinese characters would represent the family name, with two for the first name, it would take four characters for the whole name. Also, in modern China, many Chinese are now making their children's first name with only one single Chinese character, therefore resulting in Chinese names with only two characters (one for last name and one for first name) and therefore in many cases it is very difficult to tell if such a person is male or female.

Yes, there are indeed major differences between Chinese and Japanese and since I do not know of any Japanese, I really cannot explain them to you in depth. The only thing I know is if I read any Japanese even if it has Chinese characters in it, they would not make a lot of senses to me. On the other hand, if they were Chinese, I would know immediately what it may mean. However, if such Chinese characters were written in other scripts such as oracle bone scripts, seal scripts, etc., then it may take a while to decipher them. Also, Chinese is now written in "modern" Chinese style and therefore much easier to understand but if they were written in "classical" ancient Chinese, then it would be quite difficult to understand. Therefore, even for many Chinese, Chinese is a very difficult language to learn. In Hong Kong, because many students speak Cantonese which is different than Mandarian, therefore they do not write what they speak and make matters worse some of them have to learn their subjects starting Grade 7 (form 7) in English, therefore some of them actually flunk both Chinese and English.

I enjoy solving puzzles and have fun to research some of these prints or paintings posted in this forum and sometimes I got lucky. I am amazed you found the info on the painter on a Japanese web site because I did not believe I found too much on him in Chinese web site and due to the fact that I really did not spend a lot of time in researching it. Normally to do a thorough research it would take a minimum of 1 hour or more and I simply did not have the time. Therefore, in this case I am glad we could work together to solve the puzzle and I truly enjoy it.

Thanks.

Bill,

Thanks for your response. As I did indeed suspect, there are no easy ways for someone who isn't a fluent reader of either Chinese or Japanese to distinguish between the two languages in typical inscriptions on works of art, for instance signatures and titles of prints.

You are quite right, of course, that Zhou (周) is not a Japanese name, or a part of a Japanese name - if you pronounce and transcribe it in Chinese. However, if you transcribe it as Chikashi, Amane, Hiroshi, Itaru, Shû or Makoto it is indeed a Japanese name (see P G O'Neill's "Japanese Names",1972, p 81). Normally a Japanese artist name (gô) is written with two characters, though, and a signature on a Japanese ukiyo-e print usually consists of an artist name and either ga (画) or hitsu (筆), roughly meaning 'painted by'. And 周 (pronounced as 'chika') is a rather common character in Japanese artists' names, for instance Chikanobu (周延) and Kunichika　(国周). So from my point of view　周興 looked like a plausible Japanese artist's name (pronounced Chikakoshi or Shûyo). What about the third character (華), then? Well, to demonstrate further my ignorance, I have to admit I read it as 筆 (hitsu) - a mistake that someone more accustomed to Japanese or Chinese handwriting would probably not do - and consequently the three characters as 周興筆 (Chikakoshi hitsu, 'painted by Chikakoshi').

Hopefully I'm not the only one who has learnt something from this.

Best regards,
Hans Olof

Hi, Hans Olof;

Thanks for sharing your expertist in Japanese with me. It is good to know that Žü Zhou can be a Japanese name if transcribed differently.

In this case Žü‹»‰Ø, the name Xing Hua (second and third character) means "Strengthen China" or "make China strong" is most definitely a Chinese name and not a Japanese one. Also, the seal are also carved in Chinese but most obviously are the inscriptions at the bottom of the print that are definitely Chinese.

Like you suggest, anything is possible and therefore one must keep an open mind in solving any puzzle regarding arts. That is why it would be fun and beneficial for all members working together in solving a puzzle. Synergy always works better than any individual effort.

Bill

Have you gone through the Arte Lineo database of signatures yet? It's almost sure to be there.

http://www.artelino.com/forum/signatures.asp

Did you find out about this print? So funny, I have the same print that I want to sell. Do you mind if I ask how much you paid and when you bought it?

My parents bought the one I have from the artist on a trip to China in 1985. On the back of the print there is a lot of info.

Artist is is Zhou xing hua. If you google his name there is info about him online.

Asianart.com | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries |